


not perfect, but true

by BriaMaria



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bounty Hunter Harry, M/M, bookshop owner Draco, fairy tale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2020-01-22 19:55:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18534415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BriaMaria/pseuds/BriaMaria
Summary: This is how it started: a bitter witch, a distracted bounty hunter and the best-dressed bookshop owner in the business collide.This is what resulted: an epic fairytale universe that can only be escaped through a Happily Ever After.Too bad that when it comes to our dashing bounty hunter and our stubborn shopkeeper, those are in short supply.





	not perfect, but true

**Author's Note:**

> My first drarry ahhh!!! Hope you enjoy :)

It started like this: a bitter witch and a distracted bounty hunter in a dark forest deep in the rural stretches of Slovakia.

Power rolled off the witch in waves, sour-tinted and ugly, tasting of metal, copper specifically, which meant blood, which meant dark intentions.

Thank Merlin, there was no one around… except. Except there was. A man. The one who had caused said distraction in our brave bounty hunter (who, to be fair, was known to get distracted… especially by _this_ particular man).

“Malfoy,” our courageous bounty hunter growled, low in his throat, possessive, though neither of them would admit it.

“Potter,” the man who had apparated between our tenacious bounty hunter and the bitter witch drawled, in a voice that he had spent countless hours of trial-and-error perfecting _just_ to piss off our reckless bounty hunter.

“Boys,” the witch said, because she was quite vain and hated to be left out of what was clearly a conversation that had started, middled and ended with the spitting of surnames alone. She was less than pleased that neither of them even flicked her a glance. They clearly had no idea who they were dealing with.

This is how it started: a bitter witch, a distracted bounty hunter and the best-dressed bookshop owner in the business (who, as our ~~lovesick~~ bounty hunter has pointed out many, many times has no place putting himself in danger) collide.

What resulted is this: an epic fairytale that can only be escaped through a happy ending.

Too bad that when it comes to our dashing bounty hunter and our stubborn shopkeeper, those are in short supply.

 

***

 

Draco blinked away the fog that still curled at the edges of his vision, when someone bumped his shoulder without apology. Annoyance and confusion turned his sharp tongue even sharper, a curse sitting there, waiting to spill out. But it died in his mouth when he caught sight of where he was--blocking the way (which had caused said bumping) of the flow of the crowd up a set of sweeping, palatial stairs. The night sky provided a pristine velvet backdrop to the gleaming white marble thrust of spires and turrets. 

This wasn’t right. He’d been in a forest, yes? And a witch. There’d been a witch, he was sure of it.

But just as he latched onto the thought it dissolved between his fingers, a mere wisp that curled and disintegrated into the cool night air.

He was here to meet the prince.

His pulse fluttered, nervous and fast so that he could actually feel it at the base of his throat. He wasn’t supposed to be here. _They_ would be mad if they found him here. But he wanted to meet the prince.

_Did he really?_ That felt not quite right.

The sky exploded, and he reached… he reached for something. In his pocket. Except there was nothing there. His palm itched, feeling curiously empty.

“Fireworks,” the woman beside Draco breathed, and he realized there wasn’t an attack. ( _Of course_ there wasn’t an attack, why would there be an attack? Because the witch…. But what witch?)

The woman beside him slid him a glance, and then straightened, the awe sliding from her face replaced by a careful, detached mask. Draco recognized it well. Cynicism was so easy to wear, it fit like a perfectly tailored cloak, warm and protective.

“You’re here to meet the prince,” the woman said, her black hair sleek, cut short, impeccable. The curtain of it kept her striking face partially hidden.

“Aren’t we all?” Draco drawled, letting ennui coat the words because somehow he knew that would work with this woman, this woman whom he didn’t know but at the same time knew too well. Somehow saw himself in the careful tightness of her shoulders, the proud arch of her spine.

Her eyes flickered over his face, perhaps searching for a clue of his identity. It was only then he that he became aware of the weight of the mask, a domino that covered everything but his lips, his jaw. Maybe a loved one would recognize him, but certainly not this stranger.

She smiled, not a friendly twitch of the lips but rather an icy grin, more baring of teeth than anything else.

“Not me, darling.” The woman hooked their arms together. “Not my type.”

“Why’s that?” Draco allowed himself to be pulled through the gawking crowd, pushing past those who had stopped, mouth agape, to stare, like three year olds at sparks of color against black sky. 

“Doesn’t have a vagina,” the woman said, her nails digging into his forearm. For one terrifying heartbeat, his body recoiled from the placement of her hand, an instinct without roots. When he looked down there was nothing but cherry red acrylics against pale white skin.

“That’s the opposite of a problem for me,” Draco said, shaky now for now reason. He couldn’t show it, though, he could never show it. If she had noticed the quick tension that had come and gone like a match strike, she didn’t remark on it. Just continued toward the doors of the castle. 

“Then I think we’ll get on just fine,” the woman flashed white teeth at him again. If she thought that was a smile, she should really practice in a mirror. “I’m Pansy by the way.” 

“Draco,” he murmured, as the guards ushered them in. The inside was as glamorous as the rest, though Draco knew not to be impressed. He was used to this. Except… he really wasn’t. He was used to scrubbing floors, and dusting windowsills and hauling water for laundry. He was used to picking apples in the orchard and cooking meals for… _them_ , soot covering his hands all the while, taunts of _cinder boy_ digging into calloused skin like barbs, clinging and refusing to let go.

He ran trembling fingers over his clothes now, fine silk and delicate fabric—familiar and not at the same time.

Maybe the witch… but, _what_ witch?

No, no he didn’t know these clothes, he didn’t know _good_ clothes. But here he was dressed in them, ready to meet the prince.

_What if I make a fool of myself?_ He didn’t say it out loud, knew not to. Weakness, doubt, those were not to be revealed, those were to be held close, tucked away into dark spaces within your chest, locked into a box and then burned. Vulnerability was unacceptable. 

Pansy knew this. Draco knew she knew this because her jaw was as sharp as his, her mouth as flat. They watched the glittering insects flit around, touch, simper, bow and scrape. The prince was hidden by their wings, their trappings. But Draco caught a glimpse of dark, messy black hair and a fire coiled in his belly, lower, if he were honest.

“You’ll never get his cock hiding behind the columns,” Pansy pointed out after nearly an hour of drifting at the periphery of the party.

Draco choked on the little cake he’d been trying to eat with some decorum, the crumbs turning to sawdust in his throat. “I’m not interested in his cock.”

The denial was a familiar weight against his tongue, and it came tumbling out as easy as an exhale. Why, though? When he was so clearly here to meet the prince. Why deny the anticipation that simmered beneath skin that felt too hot and too tight at just the sight of the prince’s hair, his shoulders?

Pansy must have been thinking along similar lines. She ignored the protestation and pulled him along. “Come on.”

Once again, she maneuvered them through the tight crowd, throwing pointy elbows along the way. He followed in her wake, enjoying the discontented rumbles that trailed behind her. Pansy didn’t seem to notice them, and again, he saw himself in her, the way she moved, the tilt of her arrogant chin, the smirk that played over her lips that told him she heard the annoyance but had no interest in acknowledging it.

It scared him, this fast connection, this… friendship? But surely, no, that wasn’t what this was. They were strangers, nothing more.

He was still probing at the question like a loose tooth, wiggling it, tonguing it, paying it far too much attention, when Pansy tripped him. Tripped him _and_ pushed him.

Into the waiting arms of the prince.

The prince caught Draco, because _of course_ the prince caught Draco. He was a prince. It was what they did.

Their eyes met. The prince’s were green (like somehow Draco knew they would be), gold flecks making them interesting. His skin was smooth and dark; his beard thick but well-trimmed; his lips plump and parted. Draco kind of wanted to punch him in his teeth.

He didn’t know why.

“Oh, he’s been feeling faint all night,” Pansy was going on in a simper that wasn’t her own. “Maybe you could get him some air. 

“This wasn’t me,” Draco murmured so that only the prince would hear and not all the onlookers who were watching with a mix of envy and disgust that Draco couldn’t blame them for.

A summer-lightning smile tugged at the prince’s lips before it was gone, thunder taking up residence between his brows. Not directed at Draco, though. More, a performance. A show.

Concern. Because princes showed concern when damsels fainted in their arms. It was what was _done._

With a few grand gestures, the prince righted them both (they had been dipped in a dramatic fashion suited best for romance novels and Greek tragedies) and then swept them out toward a patio, a secluded one.

It was small, enclosed by (deliberately) overgrown lilac bushes that provided a semblance of privacy in a world where that was probably hard to come by.

Draco crossed toward the balustrade, as far away from the prince as possible, despite the hook in his chest that pulled at him, begged him to move toward the man rather than away.

“That was nicely orchestrated,” said the prince—Harry Potter, Draco knew, but dared not actually call him that. “You have your five minutes. What will you do with them?”

There was a bitterness there that cut deep, acid lashings, jagged at the edges, torn skin and wounded pride.

_It wasn’t me._ The protestation trembled on the inside of Draco’s closed mouth, but he wouldn’t throw his new friend beneath the wheels of a carriage. And, anyway, the prince had likely heard every version of that particular denial. Draco imagined he was constantly fending off the advances of people who wanted his title, and not the man behind it. 

How to say Draco wasn’t one of them? When he didn’t even know if that was the truth? There was soot beneath his fingernails, after all, and a sense that he should be dressed in fine clothes anyway. Did that mean he wanted the prince for his riches? 

Draco pursed his lips as he stared across the yawning expanse of the lawn behind the castle. It was well-manicured, probably the dream of every horticulturist in the land.

Quick as a hummingbird, he reached out, touched the prince’s wrist gently with just a fingertip and then was over the low wall, landing in the garden in the next breath. He looked back and up. “Come on, then.”

The prince hesitated, surely every protocol ever drilled into his head warning against whatever challenge Draco was issuing.

But Draco knew, he _knew_ , exactly what to say, as if this had already played out, as if he was following some script. “Scared, Potter?”

The prince’s body tensed, went on alert. A predator sensing prey, easy prey at that. His eyes gleamed in the starlight, dark and unreadable. But there was something excited in the way his body leaned forward. “You wish.”

And then he was over the balustrade, landing on the earth with the silent grace of a hunter. They stared at each other, caught in a moment, the world blurring at the edges and then sharpening once more.

They were off, running. A chase. 

Blood pounded in Draco’s ears, his feet flew over the rolls and dips of the lawn, heading toward the forest. Where the witch was. He stumbled, almost went down, the prince only a few feet behind him. Draco straightened, took off again. 

They ran, wild like that, exhilarated and laughing into the night sky, which swallowed their giddiness, holding it in its belly so that no one else could see.

When they made it to the tree line, Draco let the prince catch him. The prince’s body slammed into his, taking them both to the ground. At the last moment, the prince twisted, so that he bore the brunt of the impact. 

Draco rolled his eyes even as his body landed with a soft _thwump_ against a well-built chest. Self-sacrificing dolt.

Except… how did Draco know that? He knew it with that same soul-certainty that he’d known the other things, the Pansy things, and the muscle ache and the fact that the prince wanted challenge more than anything else.

But how? How did he…?

The question was gone, not even an echo lingering, as the prince laughed up at him from the ground. “Well, that was different.”

  _Different_. That’s what Draco could offer. Not righteousness. Not a partnership based on trust and respect and higher values. But different. That, he could do.

He smoothed a hand over the strands of his hair that had slipped out of the top-knot, affecting boredom as if he hadn’t just been racing like a child across the prince’s garden. Then he (reluctantly) rolled to his feet, held out a hand.

The prince hesitated, and some dull pain throbbed in Draco’s chest, a rejection that of course wasn’t a rejection but a pause. Still. It hurt. It ached, and not in a good way.

He pulled back his hand.

But before he could retract it fully, the prince reached up, clasped a sweat-slick palm with his own, warm and dry and comforting. A salve applied gently, thickly to the hurt.

Draco dropped the handshake as soon as the prince was standing, because he wanted it too much and something told him not to be greedy. So he let go.

Then he stared up at the blanket of branches and leaves that held them in a secure embrace.

“Yell,” he said to the prince without looking at him. They were stood side by side, shoulders brushing, their inhales, their exhales synced beyond what should be normal, their bodies swaying toward each other as the night held its breath around them.

“What?” the prince asked, quiet, so quiet that it almost got lost to the wind. But Draco heard.

“Yell,” he said again. Simply.

A snort. A huff. Shifting feet. “What?”

The prince was not the type to voice his frustrations, his displeasure, his hurt, his irritation, his insecurity, his pain, his rejection, his anger. Draco knew this, because he knew this. He knew this because there were stars in the sky and a moon there, too. He knew this because he knew there should be a mark on his arm and a witch in this forest and a wand in his pocket. He knew this because he knew the prince thought he should be what everyone else wanted him to be instead of being who he was: a man who needed to yell sometimes.

Draco tilted his head back and screamed. It was too high and embarrassing and brought a flush of …shame? Embarrassment? Happiness? To his cheeks. He screamed because he knew the prince wouldn’t be vulnerable first. Not to Draco. Not if there was a possibility that this could be a joke.

It wasn’t though.

Draco’s yell rippled out, then was absorbed by the trees who seemed eager to watch this exchange.

“Yell?” the prince whispered, a child-like hesitation in his voice, his eyes dark and bleak, like they were in the shadows, a cupboard, maybe? Why a cupboard?

Bells tolled in the distance. Midnight.

_No._

“Yell,” Draco told him, again. Not knowing why it was important, but knowing that it was. “Yell, darling.”

The prince flinched at the endearment, walls coming back up. He still thought this was a trick, those defenses too fortified to consider otherwise. The bells continued to toll.

“Trust me,” Draco begged, despite the fact that the words were acid on his tongue. He did not beg. He. Did. Not. Beg. But maybe for the prince… Who was watching him with shuttered eyes. Draco scrambled for his fingers, even as the world faded. He whispered again. “Yell.”

But the prince did not yell, did not yield. And everything went dark.

***

Candlelight flickered against stone walls. A castle. But a different one…

A different one than what?

Draco groaned, a staccato pounding taking up residence in his frontal lobe as he tried to chase down the thought. When he opened his eyes it was to find a wardrobe, a clock and a teapot watching him with varying degrees of excitement. The timepiece was the most sober out of the three, so he chose that to focus on. (And not the fact that there were three inanimate objects staring at him.)

“Where…”

“Master Malfoy! Welcome,” intoned the wardrobe, the doors rattling along with the deep, formal voice that came out of its… mouth? Surely not. 

“Don’t get so excitable, Neville,” the clock said, slow and dreary-like. “You’ll just end up disappointed.”

“Pish-posh,” the teapot nudged the clock with its spout. (It’s spout? Draco’s headache intensified.) “Always looking at the gloomy side of life, Percy. Chin up, dear.”

“I lost my chin decades ago,” the clock pointed out. (And fair points to him, really.)

The teapot rolled its eyes. And all Draco could do was blink as they were then turned on him. “The master is waiting for you for dinner, sir.”

“Oh, god…” Draco glanced down at himself to find he was trussed up like some kind of sacrificial offering. A polite offering—bright yellow vest, nicely tailored jacket—but an offering at that. Everything was coming back to him in snatches. The beast. It lived in the castle in the woods.

Where the witch was.

No. The witch was gone. It was just the beast.

Draco’s headache pounded.

“Will he…”

“Eat you dear?” the teapot offered up, hesitant and warm. “I don’t think so. Probably not… I’d say.”

That was less than reassuring.

Draco made his way down toward the ballroom, the memories of another castle hovering just out of sight. He knew they were there, but couldn’t grab hold of them. 

The beast was waiting for him, a silhouette at the window. Broad, and a bit taller than Draco’s lanky build. His hair was long, dark and swept back into a low ponytail, tied with a silk white ribbon, tamed in the way that Draco knew wasn’t commonplace.

When the beast turned at the sound of Draco’s boots against well-polished floor, the glow of the flames lighting the room flickered over the planes of his face, creating valleys and peaks that Draco had the inexplicable urge to explore with this tongue. His beard was a wild thing, tangled, though some effort had been clearly made to tame it. It was threaded through with gold, just like the beast’s hungry eyes.

Which…. Were roving over Draco perhaps taking in the way the vest pinched in at the waist, the way his fine trousers hugged thigh muscles that were surprisingly thick for his particular build. Warmth touched Draco’s skin, spread, sunk in deep. 

This beast, this beast should scare him, with his too sharp teeth and his greedy stare. But instead, Draco felt _wanted_ in a way he couldn’t remember. Blatantly, without hesitation. Wanted.

They didn’t say anything for too long. Draco should say something, soothe the social awkwardness. But the silence settled around them instead, and they drifted closer, closer, closer until their bodies were a hairsbreadth apart.

“The library,” the beast growled out. The first thing he’d said since Draco had walked into the room.

Draco blinked. “What?”

“Books,” the beast shook his head, looking frustrated with himself, with his lack of … words? “You like books.”

“I like books,” Draco repeated. Nodded. It was… sweet? Almost.

The beast whirled, stormed off.

Draco followed, because what else was he supposed to do? He tracked the beast’s shadow down the long hallways, the clack of the clock, the wardrobe, the teapot, the wheel burrow, the ottoman, the feather duster and no fewer than six—six!—tea cups trailing behind him.

When Draco finally walked through the door to where the beast was clearly leading him he gasped.

_You like books,_ the beast had said as if it were _nothing_.

The room was _not_ a bedroom, but a library. A brilliant one at that, with shelves and shelves and shelves and shelves lining the walls, ladders braced up against them because the stacks were just that tall, tables all but dipping from the heavy weight of books, piles on the ground even. Draco’s soul sang, a note that was pure and crystal clear and heavenly in the hush that came naturally with thick tomes. 

He turned a watery gaze on the beast who shuffled beneath the appreciation, a claw-like hand rubbing at the back of his neck, his cheek pink and flushed beautifully. 

“You can….” He trailed off, shook his head, like he did when he couldn’t find the words. “It’s yours.”

And Draco fell.

It was a simple thing, as simple as breathing, as simple as thinking… as simple as reading. He fell, just like that.

He didn’t get gifts, not ones he wanted. He received gifts he _should_ want, _should_ prize but didn’t. When he tried to think of what those were, he couldn’t, but the feeling was there. The slight disappointment that came with opening something you _knew_ you weren’t going to like because whatever the present was, it was never thoughtful, never about _him_ but about tradition and honor and society. 

And here. Here was a library for _him._ One he didn’t deserve, one that was wondrous and shouldn’t be given away lightly. One that was everything he wanted and had never thought he could ask for.

Never thought he deserved. 

So, he fell. Because sometimes people gave you things that you didn’t deserve, and that made them all the more special because of it.

Draco crossed the room, stopped in front of the beast, who shifted away, then closer, then away again.

The beast was not used to getting what he wanted either, didn’t think he deserved all the praise he received. 

Reaching up, Draco cupped the back of the beast’s neck, pulled him down, closer, until their lips touched, slick and wet, and everything. _Everything._  

It was chaste, barely a kiss, more a whisper A promise. Yet time stood still, and they breathed. They breathed each other’s air, their lungs expanding, contracting. It was intimate, and startling and when Draco pulled back, the beast’s eyes were wide, his pupils blown.

With a roar, a shake, and whimper the beast stepped back. “You don’t want me.”

“What?” Draco reached out, but the beast flinched, retreating further. Oh, the villagers were so wrong, so wrong. The beast would never hurt them. No, the beast took all his pain, gathered it close, only let it hurt himself. Deep wounds that he wouldn’t let heal because he was a stubborn fucking bastard who couldn’t just fucking let himself…

The world went dark at the edges.

“No…” Draco whispered as the beast cowered, then roared again, getting big, getting scary. Sometimes when you tamped down all that anger, that fear, for too long it had nowhere to go but out. This spitting, wild thing was what the villagers lit torches over. “No…”

But it was too late. The world dissolved to gray, and then to nothing.

***

Pain laced through Draco’s chest, so acute that he couldn’t breathe. He dropped to his knees, not even registering the sharpness of rocks against bone as he did so.

_No._

The prince was laid out in front of him, still as death, pale, his chest unmoving, his lips parted, but no breath escaping.

_No._

Draco’s mind recoiled from the sight, hid, rejected reality, even as his body was paralyzed, crumpled on the ground beneath the glass coffin.

This wasn’t…

The prince didn’t die. Or he did? But then came back? Draco was confused. He knew… He knew, yes, the prince had died.

_No._ Every part of him shrieked the rejection, but still he knew. The prince _had_ died.

But unlike anyone else, he’d come back. He’d returned. To Draco.

_No._

Not to Draco. Not to the world even. Shadows had haunted his eyes, his cheeks, his words. He was no longer as quick to smile, no longer as quick to temper. His movements were slow, calculated, weighty. Sometimes Draco could get that spark back…. But what? No. He didn’t know the prince. Or he did… But?

It was confusing.

His head pounded, and when he lifted his hand to his nose, his fingers came away with blood.

_Shit._

Draco reached for the coffin.

_One last kiss._

It was madness, the thought. Yet once it came, Draco couldn’t let it go. It clawed at his brain, his tired, exhausted brain. It _clawed_ at him.

He lifted the glass lid.

His beloved. 

_No, what?_ Yes. His beloved. His tired, exhausted beloved. It was almost a relief to see him at rest, if that’s what it was. A rest. His brain offered arguments to that, but he ignored them. His beloved was resting. That was it. 

Draco touched trembling fingers to the lines at the corners of his eyes. Those were new. From too many late nights…. Wait. Why late nights? He shook his head.

His fingers trailed lower, his thumb catching on that plump lower lip. The world shifted and he saw that lip caught between teeth, in a library, hesitant about how a gift was going to be received; in a forest laying on the ground; in different woods, pouting at Draco, who had been where he shouldn’t have been; at a café drinking coffees every Friday morning and pretending it wasn’t routine; sipping pints at a bar every other Wednesday at trivia with a mix of friends they never thought would be friends; at Draco’s shop, as the prince nestled into a leather chair, a book and a cup of tea at his elbow, watching Draco instead of reading; at a concert, in the dark, with the bass thrumming in their bodies, and the hips pressed too close. Draco saw those lips.

He leaned in, his breath a whisper against those lips. But then… he hesitated. Because he always hesitated. Because how could the prince—the prince!—want _him_. Draco. Who was wanting in so many ways. Who could never offer the prince anything but himself. And what did that amount to? A burned-and-salted reputation, a mark on his arm, baggage that they’d never managed to unpack?

Draco paused, hovered. Then withdrew. Even as he did the world dissolved at the corners and he let it. If this was reality, he didn’t want it.

***

And so it went. Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter lived hundreds of lives, hundreds of fairy tales, never quite getting it right. Because happily ever afters didn’t happen to people like them.

Except… Except sometimes they did. Sometimes fate got it right.

***

Draco counted the hundredth stroke as he worked the brush through his glowing hair. It pulsed with a friendly magic, a puppy dog, if Draco had to put a finer point on the matter. He wished it would act more like a peacock, territorial and standoffish, but it wasn’t something he could dictate.

And so his magic wagged its tail, slobbered on his cheeks, barked at squirrels and then became distracted by the next shiny object that came into view. He sighed. It would be embarrassing if anyone were around.

It was just him, though. Like always.

The loneliness was a welcome sort of ache, almost comforting in its familiarity. His parents had locked him in his tower a long time ago—for his own protection!—and he was used to the silence. To the unanswered questions, to the stone walls that absorbed his affection but gave nothing back, to the strict rules he had to follow when someone _did_ visit him.

His mother, usually. She watched him with watery eyes and brushed his hair, and sometimes they talked. It was heaven, really, though he would never admit it. He wasn’t supposed to show weakness like that, _preference_ for something. It could be used against him. By their enemies. He should always—always!—remain proper, unbending, hard and snide in the face of anyone. 

His mother sometimes cried, those days where she brushed his hair and they talked and he told her about the walls and how they didn’t like to chat back with him. But his father never did. No. Draco made his father proud. He could tell by the way his father’s mouth would settle in a straight line instead of a deep scowl, in the way his father didn’t _hit_ him, because Draco wasn’t _bad_ , he was _good_ and maybe he sometimes talked to the walls, but that was only sometimes.

Now, he petted his hair, gave it a little pat, told his magic that it was _good_ because he didn’t hear it quite enough but when he did, a golden glow ballooned in his chest, overtaking even the loneliness that carved out a permanent home there.

“Hello?”

Someone! Someone was at the bottom of the tower. But that couldn’t be right. No one visited Draco. He wasn’t worthy of visits.

Draco dashed to the stove to grab the only possible weapon, clutching his cast-iron pan to his chest before slinking closer to the window. He wished he had his …. What? His what? His hand itched for something, but he didn’t… what did it want?

It didn’t matter, the voice was there again, taking priority. “Hello? Is anyone up there?”

The voice was deep and lovely, the waves of it shimmering over Draco’s skin in a strange ripple. He hadn’t talked to anyone other than Mother and Father for …. Well he couldn’t remember how long.

"I think you're up there!" It was a brave voice, with a hint of mischief. Draco leaned toward it, his body tugged along with the inhale that came right before the man’s next words. “I’m coming up.”

“You can’t,” Draco finally hollered down, white knuckled grip against the black of the pan’s handle, his hair coiled at his feet, panting in fear. “I’m armed.”

It was sort of a bluff, but Draco had no shame. He would lie, cheat and steal his way out of trouble. That was what survival was.

There was a pause below. Probably the man reconsidering his foolish boast of scaling the tower. Probably leaving. Disappointment hit him so strong that Draco nearly doubled over with it, his grip on the pan going lax, his hair leaping into his lap, offering softness, warmth in a sad attempt at comfort.

Then: “We need to talk.”

“I don’t even know you,” Draco called back, weak with relief, slumped against the wall. He wasn’t alone. The man hadn’t left him. He wasn’t alone.

“I think…” another pause. A shorter one, so that Draco didn’t panic. “I think we do. I think  _you_ do. Know me, that is.”

The witch.

What? 

“What,” he said it out loud this time, though didn’t quite manage to make it into a question beyond his own breathiness.

“Can I come up?”

The walls tightened around him, like his lungs, contracting, expanding, with each breath. If he let the man up…

Then he wouldn’t be alone.

“There’s no ladder,” Draco argued. Because he was good at that. Finding reasons they couldn’t be together. Because if they weren’t together then Draco couldn’t be hurt. Maybe he was lonely in his tower, but it was a gentle throb that he knew. It didn’t eviscerate him. Like he knew the prince could.

A pause again. Longer, but still… not too long to make Draco worry. “Throw down your hair.” 

Draco’s hair leapt—leapt!—with eagerness, all but throwing itself out the window, giddy and glowing and beautiful as the moon in the middle of the day. Draco tried to pull it back, rein it in, but it was no use. A lost cause. Draco had known it as soon as he’d heard the man’s voice.

The man grabbed on to it, tugged, and Draco dared a peek out the window.

Messy, black hair, a lean body. Draco couldn’t see details, he was too high up, but his hair didn’t need to. It was in love. It wrapped around the man, tight and secure, pulsing with Draco’s magic. 

“I won’t hurt you, will I?” the man called up as he went to brace his feet on the smooth tower walls.

Will you? The world grayed at the edges, but Draco fought it. It was easier to, when he was connected like this to the man, the man who said Draco knew him. Reality sharpened and Draco shook off the fog. 

“No.” The truth of it settled into Draco's stomach. The man wouldn’t hurt him.

It didn’t take long before the man reached the window and hauled himself through. He tripped, stumbled, tried to right himself, and Draco’s hair was there, supporting him until he found his feet.

Draco had a flash of a memory, of falling into a prince’s arms, of being caught, held so gently like that.

“You’re bleeding,” the man said, crossing the small tower room in three strides, his hand coming up to cup Draco’s jaw, his thumb swiping beneath a sharp pointed nose. It came away copper-smeared.

The witch. She had smelled like copper. The air had, just before…

“Stop, shhh,” the man said, his palm tilting Draco’s face up and back. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

“Who are you?” Draco finally asked, the cast iron still in his hand, though hanging limply by his side. This could be a trick, a trap. The fog crept in.

“I’m Harry,” the man—Harry!—said, his gaze still locked on Draco’s bleeding nose. But he spared Draco a quick summer-lightning smile before it faded to thunder-concern. The world tilted. The first time Draco had been on the receiving end of that smile had been at the castle….

Except, no. That wasn’t right. The first time _had_ been at a castle, but not the one with the prince, not the one falling into his arms. Instead, they’d been by a lake, it had been nighttime, their jeans wet from mud and grass. They hadn’t said much, hadn’t even meant to be there together. Both running from nightmares that never quite dissolved completely. Draco had brought a bottle of something they passed back and forth. The venom they spit at each other was familiar, a habit more than anything with intention. They were both too tired to cling to old grudges, and they were both to bruised and scarred from the war to bicker like children. 

Perhaps others might have been confused about why Harry Potter (for that's what the man's name was, Draco was as certain of that as his next heartbeat) had chosen to sit with Draco Malfoy that night, when by all intents Harry should have hated him. But Draco knew. It was because he didn’t talk to him. Just let him be. Company that didn’t fawn, didn’t press, didn’t ask for anything Harry couldn’t give.

Surrounded by the walls of his tower, Draco recognized the beauty in that.

But the world was tilting again.

“Hey, hey, stay with me,” Harry murmured, his palm still warm against Draco’s face. The connection, it helped, neither of them pulling away this time.

_This time?_  

“What….?”

“You know me,” Harry said, more sure, their eyes locked. Power hummed and sparkled between them, Draco’s hair coiling around Harry’s legs, offering another point of connection.

“I do,” Draco whispered, though he couldn’t say how. He remembered the night at the lake, the summer-lightning smile when he’d offered his hand to help Harry stand and it had been taken; he remembered a library, a glass coffin, a big bad wolf and little red, a cottage made of candy, the ocean, a mermaid. None of it could be right, if any of them were. “Are they dreams?”

“A curse,” Harry murmured.

“We have to break it.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” Harry, the little prick (this Draco also knew), said. “Working on it.”

Draco straightened his spine, not interested in being the fainting damsel in this scenario. “What do you know?”

Harry shook his head in frustration, breaking their eye contact. But his fingers stayed where they were, his thumb idly tracing a soothing pattern along Draco’s jaw. “We’re in fairy tales. We keep…. living them.”

“Fairy tales?” That didn’t…. but the castles. So many castles. And this man. This prince. The beast. The wolf. The man who climbed up his tower. They were all one in the same. Draco's head throbbed.

“Most of the time, I can’t… I can’t remember from one to the next,” Harry said, voice gruff. “Or only snatches. It’s like the Imperius, I can shake it off, but not entirely.”

The witch. In the forest. “There was a witch.”

“Yeah,” Harry agreed. “But I can’t…” Then his body tensed, and he looked back at Draco. “Why were you there?”

Draco licked his lip. The copper smell. The thick leaves. Potter standing in a clearing looking like a buffoon, his mouth parted in surprise. Why had Draco been there, though?

His bookshop. Earlier. Potter had been researching something… fairy tales. “You asked for my help.” 

“I wouldn’t have dragged you into something dangerous,” Harry said, quick and automatic.

Draco rolled his eyes, but didn’t dare pull away. This was the furthest they’d ever gotten. “You just wanted my fairy tale books.”

Potter dropped by sometimes like that. Research, he'd say, and then burrow down in Draco’s comfy chairs as customers wandered in and out, his hand resting on the head of Draco’s tabby cat where it always curled up in his lap. A scholarly bounty hunter who just wouldn’t admit he preferred warm days in bookshops to hunting down murderers and dark witches.

“Right,” Harry said, his eyes sliding closed. “A witch. She was cursing people into fairy tales.” When his eyes opened again they were intense. “You found something?”

“Yes,” Draco said slowly, the vague memory of excitement lacing his blood. He wanted to help Potter, always wanted to help him, keep him safe. “But it had to do with one person being trapped. Not two, not both of us.”

They paused. The witch. The forest. The curse.

“They lived happily ever after,” Draco murmured, his body swaying toward Harry’s. Harry’s fingers left Draco's face, and Draco cried out, a keening wail that would have been embarrassing had he not been so desperate for contact. The world shivered at the edges, but only for a heartbeat.

Harry’s hands were on his shoulder, steadying him, offering support.

“Keep me here,” Draco begged, he didn’t want to leave again. He didn’t want the darkness. “Keep me with you.”

“Always,” Harry’s voice was rough, dragged over gravel. He pulled Draco tight, so they were chest to chest, hips pressed together, legs slotting. Draco’s hair wound around them, pulsing with warmth and power.

It’s like Imperius, Harry had said. Draco had never been able to shake it off, but he knew the theory. Find pieces of yourself, hold onto them.

“She didn’t think we could do it,” Draco said. The flashes they came. The fights. The harsh words. Yes, they’d had that night at the lake, they’d had others like it. They’d had slow Sunday afternoons in Draco’s bookshops, and evenings at the pub. But they’d also had harsh words, ones that knew just how to cut to the bone. They had fights. They had three years in the middle there where they hadn’t talked at all, Potter traveling the world, Draco hiding from it.

When they saw each other once more it was no longer petty bickering, but real, hurtful rows. Prejudice, stubbornness, arrogance and righteousness. They clashed like spells would, leaving marks on them both. They both were the person who could wound the other the most, and they had too much history--and were too mean, the both of them--to be gentle about it.

“Hmm?” 

“She didn’t think we could it,” Draco said again, because they did have the lake and the bookshop and walks in the park, Harry bringing Draco tea when he ran out and was too swamped with customers, Draco tucking books in Harry’s bag before he left because he knew he would like them. They had nights where one drank too much and the other made sure he got home, nights where Harry couldn’t talk, so Draco chattered to their friends so they wouldn't notice. They had one memorable Saturday where they’d bought out the Daily Prophet (the front page with a picture of a soused Harry hanging off the arm of someone neither of them talked about) from every store in Diagon Alley and had a bonfire in a deserted field behind the Manor, standing too close, the flames warm on their face.

They weren't friends, they weren’t lovers, they weren’t enemies. What they had was more than all that. It couldn’t fit in boxes. It was their own, only theirs—their lives tangled so tightly together, it didn’t matter what anyone called it.

Harry snuffed. “She was right, though. Happily ever afters don’t exist. We’ll never get out of here.”

“Right,” Draco said, slowly. “They don’t exist.” But they didn’t exist in fairy tales either. That’s just where the book ended, not the story. So what had he learned in all the lives he'd lived here? The darkness, he knew when it came. It threatened even now. “The fairy tales end when we reject each other.”

Harry stilled above him, but didn’t say anything.

“It’s just takes a moment of doubt or fear,” Draco continued, gaining speed. “And then we don’t get the happily ever after.”

“Okay,” Harry said. “So?”

“So, we…” Draco floundered, then steadied himself. “We kiss. With intent.” 

“What a hardship,” Harry drawled.

Draco smirked as he pulled back, but then sobered. “But you have to be certain. Otherwise, we just have to do this again.”

A decision: in or out. It was one they'd avoided for years now, years. If they kept dancing around it, they wouldn't actually have to face a life together with intent. With intent. That was the key. 

Harry’s jaw set, stubborn bastard, always thinking brute force would win the day. Draco reached up, laid gentle fingers against the muscle that ticked there.

“It’s not going to be perfect,” Draco warned, and for the first time in what felt like eternity, he was himself, he was here, and Harry was, as well. But they couldn’t trick magic. If either one of them balked, it would pitch them back into the fairytales.

“Perfect’s boring,” Harry said, though his face hadn’t softened.

“Kiss me,” Draco murmured. “That’s how it’s _done._ ”

“Gladly,” Harry growled in that possessive rumble that always managed to set Draco’s skin on fire.

The world faded as Harry’s lips touched his, and for one desperate moment Draco had thought they’d failed, had thought that even in desperation they couldn’t let go of everything that had always crowded into the space between them never allowing them to close it.

But Harry’s body was a solid weight against his, his tongue sliding into Draco’s mouth, his earth-rain scent saturating the air around them.

When Draco opened his eyes once more, they were in the bookshop.

Draco sagged, and Harry just managed to catch him before he hit the floor. In a move any prince would be jealous of, Harry bent and lifted Draco so that his legs wrapped around Harry’s waist, his arms looped around his shoulders. 

It only took a few steps to get them to Harry’s favorite chair, hidden from the front windows by rows of books, but _still_. The  _were_ technically in public.

The thought was gone before it landed though, forgotten as Harry lowered himself along with Draco into the worn, soft leather that smelled of books and Harry.

Draco settled into Harry’s lap, their groins pressed together, his face buried in the safe harbor of Harry’s neck.

Harry rocked him back, cradling Draco’s head with one hand, his arched back with the other, just looking at him. Then he smiled that summer-lightening smile and laughed, almost giddy with it.

Grinning back, Draco began unbuttoning his shirt. Maybe happily ever afters didn’t exist, but who wanted one of those anyway?


End file.
